


Life in the Subjunctive

by lunabee34 (Lorraine)



Category: Dead Poets Society (1989)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Friendship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-26
Updated: 2014-03-26
Packaged: 2018-01-17 03:08:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1371664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lorraine/pseuds/lunabee34
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for Yuletide 2008.</p><p>A series of what-ifs endings for the movie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life in the Subjunctive

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chiasmus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiasmus/gifts).



_Subjunctive: of, relating to, or constituting a verb form that represents an act or state as contingent or possible_

1 

Keating teaches at Welton for nearly ten years, all told. He's surprised he stays in one place for so long, but the money is good and the position prestigious.

Over the years, Nolan has come to accept Keating's teaching style as mere pedagogical idiosyncrasy--nothing too dangerous or radical. Nolan sat Keating down that first winter and told him in no uncertain terms that while he understood the passion behind Keating's teaching methods, he must find other means of accomplishing his goals. Keating chafed. He considered returning to England. He briefly contemplated rallying his students against the administration, but ultimately he acceded to Nolan's demands. As a result, Keating doesn't encourage students to transform J. Evans Pritchard into confetti anymore, not since that first year. Keating doesn't _teach_ Pritchard, but he leaves the books intact. He reads aloud Thoreau and Whitman, but he no longer demands that students learn from them to seize control of their lives. And when they invariably find Keating's old yearbook, he just shrugs and pretends he doesn't remember.

Sometimes he remembers that first class he taught--their initial fervor, the way that fervor dwindled when he ceased to fan the flames--and he is ashamed.

2 

The world's first unmanned flying desk set takes to the air, note cards wheeling like a flock of geese over the frozen lake. Todd laughs, and the sound feels good in his chest, in his throat. Neil claps him on the back. Todd can feel the warmth of Neil's hand through three layers of clothing.

"Sometimes," Neil says and watches as the stationery finally comes to roost in a loose parabola on the snow-drifted lawn.

"Sometimes what?"

Neil just shakes his head. "Come on in," he says. "You're turning into an icicle."

That night, Todd watches Neil sleep--pale moonlight on his collarbone, the delicate arch of an exposed foot, ink stains on his fingers.

Days later, when they are sneaking back into Welton in the dead of night, the sweet whisper of snowfall all around them, Todd hangs back with Neil until the others are far ahead in the whitened blackness. Snow gathers in Neil's dark hair and his eyelashes as Todd waits in the quiet. When finally they kiss, Neil's lips are cold and chapped and his warm breath is almost painful on Todd's cheeks.

"Sometimes," Todd says against Neil's neck, along his jaw, into his mouth. "Sometimes."

3 

Cameron tells the God's honest truth and keeps his mouth shut otherwise. It's one of the hardest things he's ever done, standing up to his father like that, but he thinks Neil would be proud.

Nobody signs Nolan's confession. Not a damn one. Keating is still out on his ass; they all are, actually, but not because Cameron lied, not because he took what the DPS stands for and made it something cheap and ugly.

Most of them are headed for military school. Cameron thinks Todd's parents will be able to beg and buy him back into Welton; after all, Todd's something of a legacy at this place. Pitts will downgrade to St. Johnsbury, and Cameron envies the lucky stiff. No five a.m. reveille for Pitts.

Naturally, Cameron ends up humping twenty pounds of gear through the rice paddies alongside Pitts four years later. Pitts is meatier, with a shrapnel scar under his left ear. His grin has gone wicked and so have his jokes and sometimes Cameron thinks if he was halfway across the world with anyone else watching his back, he'd have lost his mind months ago.

"Yawp!" Pitts screams over gunfire so Cameron knows they're still alive.

4 

Later, when all is done, when Neil is in the ground, Todd goes to the cave. No one called a meeting, but the DPS is waiting there for him just the same. Knox and Nuwanda pass a bottle of hooch between them; Pitts is crying like a baby, and Cameron and Meeks are trying to comfort him and doing a piss poor job of it.

"Why?" Pitts sobs. "Why'd he have to go and do a thing like that?" He scrubs his nose on his sleeve and then presses the heel of his hand to his mouth as if to keep the rest of the words inside.

"You were right, Todd. It was his father," Knox slurs. "His father did it to him." Knox takes one shuddering breath and hurls the bottle in his hand against the ground; the glass shatters like gunshot, the whiskey now a wet stain on the stone.

"Jesus, Knox! I went to a lot of trouble to get that." Nuwanda shoves Knox into the wall, hard.

Todd thinks, "I was wrong. We did it to him. I did it to him," and wonders why no one ever told him what a lethal thing hope is.

5 

For two whole days, no one says anything to Neil about the play. They all skirt the issue. They don't look him in the eyes for long. Neil thinks that maybe this reminder of the helplessness they all share is more than any of them can handle.

Neil is turning down his sheets for bed when Todd grabs him by the wrist and whirls him around. "No," Todd says. "Just no. You're not giving in that easily."

And then Todd drags him down the hall and through the courtyard and all the way to the cave where everyone is waiting. Meeks is Titania, wrapped in a sheet, and he's even got most of the lines memorized. Nuwanda is Bottom, tube sock ears fastened to his head, and Cameron plays Lysander, poorly. Pitts is surprisingly good as Oberon and Knox makes an excellent Hermia. Todd reads all the parts that are left from Keating's battered old Bevington and doesn't stutter once. Todd crowns Neil with holly berries, and Neil becomes Puck--magnificent, quick-witted, glorious, free.

When he is sewing together the fine musculature of a child, when he is stained to the wrists with blood, Neil remembers their gift, their love.


End file.
